John Norman - Rouge of Gor

"Hold!" called the pirate. We stopped, the gate lifted. He engged the holding pawl. The gate would not now slip. The weights, overhead and to one side, swung on their chains. We reverted our position at the poles, stepping under them and then standing, turing the chain swivels to which the chains on our collars were attached. We werer no in position to brake the gate, in its lowering. I, then, like several of the others, the holding pawl now engaged, put my head down on the bar, resting. It is not easy to raise the gate. Outside I suuupposed that one or more ships, river galleys, might be gracefully entering or leaving the lakelike couryard of this holding of Policrates. The signal to raise or lower the gate is given by a guard on the wall, at the west gate tower, one of two towers flanking the sea gate. It is a voice signal. Accordingly its authenticity is seldom in doubt. Anyone, of course, might strike on a bar or blow on a trumpet. The windlass apparatus was withing the west gate tower.

It felt good to rest.

Yesterday, the gate had been open for some four Ahn. I conjectured the fleet had left. Too, it seemed likely to me that Policrates would have accompanied the fleet.

Indeed, in his hall, I had gathered from what I had heard that the fleet was to set forth under his personal command. The work afoot thus, was doubtless too serious to be left now to suborbinates. Kliomenes, I suspected would then have been left in charge of the holding. That at any rate was my hope.

"The ate is soon to be closed," said the priate. "Be ready." It takes less time to close the gate than open it, but that too, because of the weights involved, the windlass stress and the need to control the windlass, requires a considerable effort. To make the gate fall with extreme swiftness, incidentally, as was done when my galley was shattered, it is necessary only to disengage one of the counterweights. The polelike spokes, of course, by which the windlass is normally turned or managed should be freed of the windlass before this is done, a disengagement which is effected by loosing the pin-and-lock devices and withdrawing the poles from the windlass. If this were not done, the poles would spin wickedly, turing with the rotating windlass. This eventuality would be extremely dangerous, of course, to anyone withing the compass of the pole's movement or who might be, as we were, chained to the poles themselves. There are two counterweights, as I have mentioned, which partially balance the weight of the gate. The disengagement of one is quite sufficient to permit the gate to rattle viciously downward. If both were disengaged, the gate itself might be severely damanged.

"Be ready!" called the pirate. I looked upward, the collar slipping on my neck. A golden shaft of light flitered downward, falling gently into the chamber. In it there danced a myriad specks of golden dust. It was very beautiful. I also noted that the window was too narrow to admit the egress of a man.

"I fooled Policrates, himself," I memtioned to the fellow next to me, "when I brought the topaz to him. He did not know me for an imposter, any more than the dolt, Kliomenes."

The fellow looked at me blankly. "Liar!" screamed the pirate. "I have warned you about your lies. The whip fell again and again on me. "Persist in these lies," cried the pirate, "and I will bring the matter to the attention of Kliomenes himself!" "Forgive me, Captain," I said, as though frightened.

But I had gathered from his remark that my conjecture that Policrates was not now in the holding was correct. Surely if Policrates had been in the holding, he would have threatened me with his name and not that of Kliomenes, since I had expressly mentioned Policrates and he stood higher in the holding than Kliomenes. Kliomenes must now, I gathered, be in charge of the holding. This, I felt, was in the best interests of my plan.

"Lower the gate!" we heard a man call. "Lower the gate!" Then far above us and to the right of the windlass chamber, angry, entering out onto a small balcony extending into the chamber, a balcony reached through a guardroom, we saw a pirate. "Wht is going on down there?" he called.

"Nothing!" called the pirate who had been striking me. "Did you not hear the signal?" called the man on the balcony.The pirate with us glared at me, in fury. He loosened the holding pawl. Immediately we felt the stress in the windlass gates.

"Pay attention, you fool," called the man on the balcony. "Listen! Get the gate down!" Lower the gate!" cried the pirate with us, angrily. "Hurry, you fools!"

We felt the bars pulling against our arms and slowly, with effort, as the weights ascended, permitted the descent of the gate. Then the gate was down. I met the eyes of the pirate. He looked at me in fury. I looked down as though frightened.

But I was not displeased with the occurrences of this day.

"Let them be whipped," said Kliomenes, "both of them." Kliomenes reclined in the curule chair of Policrates, holding his court.

Mira and Tula, the blood sisters from Cos, kneeling naked before the chair of Kliomenes, their hands bound behind their back, their necks joined by a length of binding fiber, cried out with misery. They had failed in sufficiently pleasing Jandar, one of the minor captains in the holding of Policrates. Each in the opinion of Jandar, had not tried hard enought to outdo the other in addressing themselves to his pleasure. Perhaps the fact that they were sisters had to some extent inhibited them, each fearing to appear the most lascivious slave before the other. Yet, of course, such inhibitions, under any circumstances, are not permitted to slave girls. They would get over them, or die. Too, I suspected that Jandar had not handled them well. If he would have handled them with adequate skills, I had little doubt that each, indeed would have striven desperately to outdo the other, each trying to be the favorite. Properly handled, he would have had them in moments at one another's throats as competitive love slaves.

"Should this complaint be brought again to my attenion," said Kliomanes to the girls, "I shall have you cast naked into the jaws of tharlarion."

"Yes, Master!" said Mira. "Yes, Master!" said Tala.

"Take them away, " said Kliomenes. The two girls, by the binding fiber which tied them together by the neck, were pulled, half choking to their feet, and dragged from his presense.

"Why have I been brought here, Captain?" I asked the pirate at my side, who had conducted me to the tiles of the hall. It was he who was commonly in charge of the workers at the windlass.

"Kliomenes is holding court," he grinned. "But I have done nothing," I said as though frightened. "We shall let Kliomenes be the judge of that," he said. "Please no, Captain," I said. "Be silent," he said, grinning.

"Yes Captain," I said. the collar and chain which had fastened me to the windlass pole had been removed from my neck, but I wore still on my wrists and ankles, the other chains from the room of the windlass.

"What is next?" inquired Kliomenes. "The dispositon of loot," said a pirate. He thrust five, low, flat coffers of coins across the tiiles and put beside them a tangle of jewlery and a bowl of pearls. "And there is this too," said the man. He thrust forward a chained girl. Her ankles were joined by some two feet of graceful chain and her wrists,too, were linked by some two feet of chain. This type of chaining is not so much to confine a girl as it is to have her in chains and display her. This typoe of chaining is very beautiful. The primary bone on such a girl of course, is her slavery itself. On Gor what stronger bond need a girl wear?

She stood before Kliomenes graceful in the chains. "Is she pretty?" asked Kliomenes.

Her head was covered with semi-transparent scarled cloth, the central portion of such a cloth which had been cast over her, a large cloth, which fell to her calves. It was held on her by being tied under her chin and about her neck with a soft, braided scarlet cord. I could see the lineaments of her body beneath the semi-transparent cloth. She was left-thigh branded, the common Kajaria mark, that mark which can grace the thigh of any girl, from the most average of slaves to the prises in a Ubar's Pleasure Gardens.